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[shadowkat]

Fascinating review of Harper Lee's Go Set the Watchman by Ursula Le Guinn. (Yes, the one who wrote The Wizard of Earthsea series, and The Dispossessed.)

This bit in particular caught my eye:

It appears that the New York editor who handled the book was uninterested in the human and moral situation the author was attempting to describe, or in helping her work through the over-simplifications and ineptitudes of that part of the book. Instead, she apparently persuaded Lee to enlarge on the very charming, nostalgic early parts of the book, when Jean Louise was Scout. Lee was encouraged to go back to childhood, and so to evade the problems of the book she wanted to write by writing, instead, a lovable fairytale.

I like to think of the book it might have been, had the editor had the vision to see what this incredibly daring first-novelist was trying to do and encouraged and aided her to do it more convincingly. But no doubt the editor was, commercially speaking, altogether right. That book would have found some admirers, but never would it have become a best-seller and a “classic.” It wouldn’t have pandered to self-reassuring images of White generosity risking all to save a grateful Black man.

Before Watchman was published, I was skeptical and unhappy — all the publicity made it sound like nothing but a clever lawyer and a greedy publisher in cahoots to exploit an old woman. Now, having read the book, I glimpse a different tragedy. Lee was a young writer on a roll, with several novels in mind to write after this one. She wrote none of them. Silence, lifelong. I wonder if the reason she never wrote again was because she knew her terrifyingly successful novel was untrue. In taking the easy way, in letting wishful thinking corrupt honest perception, she lost the self-credibility she, an honest woman, needed in order to write.

Reminds me a bit of things I've read about James Joyce, JD Salinger, and John Henry O'Toole. And other artists over the years.

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Thanks for giving the link. It yet another take, one which I suspect mamculuna would find aggravating. It should tell you though that the way everyone reacts to a book is in part conditioned by their own experiences. It's not simply always subjective. Both Mamcu and Ms Le Guinn have perfectly understandable reasons, not just feelings, for judging the book one way or the other that can not be denied.

While a agree with Le Guinn in general about the book, she slips off the straight and narrow when she describes the young Harper Lee as being childish in her writing at times in the book. It's not exactly explained, and it's certainly a vague and not very helpful criticism.

I think it is important to see what the difference going through a crisis like in the book makes in how you see it. In this case I have to side with Mamcu. Le Guinn thinks that Jean Louise was just being young and a little silly. Mamcu knows better. Those of us who went through the spring of 1970 in college know better. If somebody doesn't make waves nothing ever changes.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Except didn't Le Guinn go through that time as well? She's well into her 70s, and I think of the same age as Harper Lee?

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (US /ˈɜrsələ ˈkroʊbər ləˈɡwɪn/;[1] born October 21, 1929) is an American author of novels, children's books, and short stories, mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She has also written poetry and essays. First published in the 1960s, her work has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality and ethnography.

What hit me, and is the difference between your take and Mamcu's is Guinn's experiences with the publishing world, particularly during that specific time period. I think that influenced her review in some respects. She attacks that world far more than many other reviewers have.

She is honest in her review, which a lot of reviewers aren't - which is to say, that she begins the review with the statement that this is a personal reaction to the book. Indeed, how can it be anything else? I think how you relate to it - may well have to do with how you related to To Kill a Mockingbird. It's odd, but most of my friends of color, either haven't read the book or don't appear care about it one way or the other. It's the white friends who seem to be upset or invested in it. It's not a book that they identified with.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

Except didn't Le Guinn go through that time as well?

You would be surprised. People just a little older who weren't directly involved thought the spring of 1970 was just those lazy, spoiled kids making noise. My dramatic moment came when I realized I'd never be able to explain it to my own brother, who'd I'd always been able to discuss everything with. He didn't believe there would be any long term effects, and he'd be in his 70s now. If he were still alive today he probably couldn't connect the dots between the activism in the 1960s (much of which I missed from being too young) and the way the country has improved.

I don't fault Le Guinn. She was busy earning a living (Earthsea was written during that period), and whenever it was that she moved to the south, she didn't feel in a position to say anything. What I don't like was her implying that what a 26-year-old ran up against in the clash in the novel, was somehow the fault of her own naivete and not a responsibility from her conscience, which kind of says Le Guinn missed a major point of the book, (which the title refers to in case you still haven't read the book).

But don't forget she still did like the book. ;o)

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Yes, that generation was very different. LeGuin is 89 and Lee is 91, so they were, like Scout in Watchman, young adults when the Supreme Court decision on integration was made in 1954 (you and I were children then, CW) and by the time the Civil Rights movement really got under way in the 60's, Lee and LeGuin were in their 30's--and yes, focused on their lives as writers.

I do think, as I said above, that LeGuin knows something about transforming the moral issues of the real world into fiction, but I agree that she missed that point about setting the Watchman. I don't think LeGuin would let herself have that moral lapse.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I was discussing this a lot with my mother - who is in her 70s, and she related to some of what Harper Lee was going through at the time. She said that her parents were, while kind people, also racist. They didn't want change. And I know my father's were the same. And I've personally had experiences with people I loved who were bigoted. My uncle, who is dead now, was a bigot and a bit of redneck, but a loving man. My father could barely stand to be in the room with him at times, nor could I without flinching. (He wasn't, thankfully related to my father.)

It's not clear cut. And each generation experiences it differently. When I was a kid - I experience the desegregation of schools in West Chester County PA. We changed schools in the fifth grade, and were bused 1-2 hours out of the way to a new integrated school. I didn't mind it so much. Loved the new friends I made. And the two African-Americans I met, were wonderful. My parents also supported it. But we also moved to Kansas that year - and to a school that was white, and in a white neighborhood. There were a few POCs in the area - but maybe one or two went to our school. And when I went to college? About 20%? I had a black roommate and dated a black man briefly, who was one of my best friends. This was in the 1970s-1980s. My father had a black roommate in college and had traveled through the south in the early 1960s with him. Also, my father had gotten his Masters in Social History, specializing in African American History.

For me? Most of the big stuff in college, the controversial stuff - was gay rights, and women's rights. Although I was always aware of the racial divides.

So, I related to the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" differently, as did my parents. My parents related more to it than I did. I loved the book, but it felt to me, a bit romanticized. Reminded a little of Carson McCuller's Member of the Wedding, which I also loved.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I thought it was totally romanticized. Nothing like that could possibly have happened.

Flannery O'Connor was the real south, though.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

As was Margaret Mitchell, whose "Gone with the Wind" was published in 1936, around the same time that To Kill a Mockingbird takes place. It's a creature of its time as well. If you think the 60s and 70s were bad, the 1930s were even worse.

A friend of mine used to say that she read Flannery O'Connor to better understand how the racist's think. Which I found insightful.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Exactly--not that Flannery O'Connor was a racist herself, but that she really saw into that mindset.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ack you replied as I was editing the comment.

Anyhow... added this:

There's two ways of approaching it , I think - one is largely from the "social justice angle" which is how Mamaculuna and you reacted to it. The other is from a publishing/writing angle - which is how selenak, Le Guinn in part, and I've been reacting to it. I haven't read the book in question - so I can't comment on the "social justice angle", but from the reviews and the history -- the publishing/writing angle is fascinating me. I agree it does show how our relationship to a book is governed by our experiences. We can't really separate the two, and we tend to, like it or not, judge everything and everyone based on our memories of those experiences and what we learned from them. Not necessarily what had happened to us, but from what we think happened. We are at the end, unreliable narrators of our own experience. Which I think to a degree the two books that Harper Lee wrote demonstrate effectively.

The other bit that fascinates...is how the publishing world manipulates art to produce what it believes works, again for good and ill. So there's another unreliable agent added to the mix. The author's truth is diluted by the interference of an editor who wants the story to reflect a different experience than the author's own, possibly the experience the editor related to.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

LeGuin could never aggravate me! This part in particular seems totally accurate to me:

"It appears that the New York editor who handled the book was uninterested in the human and moral situation the author was attempting to describe, or in helping her work through the over-simplifications and ineptitudes of that part of the book. Instead, she apparently persuaded Lee to enlarge on the very charming, nostalgic early parts of the book, when Jean Louise was Scout. Lee was encouraged to go back to childhood, and so to evade the problems of the book she wanted to write by writing, instead, a lovable fairytale."

However, Leguin lived in a different world, growing up in Berkeley, where I've also lived. I suspect that I react to Watchman the way I do because I have literally lived with people who say they things people say in Watchman, and I know what actions are based on that. And I think Lee knew it too, but just didn't know how, in that book at least, to show the falsity and danger in people like Watchman!Atticus, Hank, and her uncle. Too bad she didn't have some encouragement to focus on writing something more revealing, but that probably would have been less salable at the time.

I always read LeGuin remembering that her father was the one who put a human being in a museum (Ishi, the Last of His Tribe (http://www.amazon.com/Ishi-Tribe-Bantam-Starfire-Books/dp/0553248987)), so she knows a lot about moral complexities. But she also knows a lot about being a writer, and can probably see in Lee's book some potential that I missed, reading purely from my personal angle.

But yes, I think there's plenty of blame for editors and publishers in this whole thing. Lee was not served well by them.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is how I was looking at it - from a writer's perspective not the reader's or the social justice activist.

I find Le Guinn's take interesting, because she is a socio-political writer, and a social justice activist. And she hit upon the same thing that has been bugging me in reading all of these reviews -- that Harper Lee had all these stories inside her, but no way to get them out. I identify with this - because I've been struggling with this as well.

The publishing industry has not changed in the last 100 years. It's still run by cowards.
Who want an easy to market best-seller. They don't really want something different.
I know - the responses I got when I sent my novels to them were: great writing, turn it into a murder mystery or a cozy and maybe we can sell it.

In a way it's reassuring to see Harper Lee received the similar responses, as did James Joyce, Virgina Woolf, Mark Twain, JK Rowling and various others. JD Salinger refused to send his writing to publishers after Catcher in the Rye's success because they wanted him to write another just like it.

Le Guinn gets that - because I think she's struggled with it as well, particularly in the difficult field of science fiction.

I can't help but wonder what would have happened if the editor had a been a better and far more empathetic editor.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the reason she never wrote again was because she knew her terrifyingly successful novel was untrue.

That's interesting to ponder, I wonder how much of a struggle it was for her to see Atticus romanticised as much as he was when her original intent had been to address Scout overtly romanticising her father as a hero

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly what would have made it a good book.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. I keep wondering what would have happened if the editor had been better? I think the failing is the editors and publisher's. They failed the readers and the writer. Editing is a hard job, and so few appear to do it well. It requires an ability to help a writer structure the story on the page, without gutting it or removing what makes it worthwhile. Too often editors gut the story, and take what made it interesting away from it. They'll tell the writer, somewhat lazily, to rewrite it - make a thriller, or a cozy, or in this case - a coming of age story. It's lazy editing. And it makes me so angry.

When I read that Lee only agreed to have this published if it wasn't edited -- I realized she too was upset with how they edited her novel, and felt they'd failed her.